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Singapore's Loan Sharking Problem

"Most of the people who turn to loan sharks are from low-income families and they usually borrow small amounts like S$200 or S$300," explains Ravi Philemon, a voluntary social worker and the executive director of a charity for the mentally-disabled. "You shouldn't criminalize people who have no choice but to turn to the loan sharks to buy food and clothes for their families."

Philemon argues that if the law is brought in it will stop victims of loan shark harassment from going to the police for fear that they themselves will be arrested. "This would reduce the number of people reporting loan shark harassment to the police but would not solve the basic problem," he adds.

Philemon believes that the root cause of the problem is a lack of sources of unsecured credit for less well-off Singaporeans. He cites the case of one family that wanted to set up a food stall and had no other alternative than to borrow from a loan shark. When their business faced cash-flow problems, they defaulted on their repayments and the amount they owed spiraled from S$20,000 to S$90,000. They were eventually forced to sell their flat earlier this year and now live in a tent in Sembawang Park, on the northern coast of Singapore.

"We need to make loans available to lower-income families and if the banks won't lend at the moment then the government should," he argues.

"Where were the Farid Khans and the Salleh Maricans? Why didn't they come?... Because they knew that in an open election - all things being equal - a non-Chinese candidate would have no chance."
Having contested an election as a minority candidate, I am disturbed enough by his comments to write this note. Let me explain why.

Simple answer for PM Lee

I declined invitations to contest the 2011 General Election. This was because I was at a different stage of my life. My children were much younger, I had just come back from the USA a few years before and had to re-establish my career here. I did not know if I had the temperament for public life. These were just some of the reasons why I chose to decline those invitations.

Even in 2011, the pool of people who could qualify for the Presidential race was small.…

The Ministry of Communication and Information (MCI) has taken out a Facebook ad titled, 'Get real about fake news', The ad is taken out after the PAP-controlled Parliament passed the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation (POFMA) Bill, with all opposition Members of Parliament voting against the Bill.

The ad draws attention to the viral hoax that Punggol Waterway Terraces had collapsed. The ad said "the hoax triggered anxiety amongst the residents", and urged Singaporeans to "say no to fake news".

It is unfortunate that a website published such an unverified report, and it is certainly unacceptable that it caused much anxiety to the residents of the development (and to all Singaporeans). The publishers and the editors of the website acted irresponsibly in posting the report of the 'collapse' without proper verification, and no one should make any excuses for them for this.

Lamenting the lack of concentration of brilliance in Singapore, PM Lee Hsien Loong in a IPS dialogue held recently said that he believed in having a certain natural aristocracy in the system (a form of elitism where people are respected because they have earned that) for without that society will lose out. (Transcript of Speech here: http://bit.ly/1JOtiYP)

His views are of course not new and he had articulated them in another Speech in the year 2007, expressing why he believed that Singapore does not have enough talent for two A-Teams (link: http://bit.ly/1NFyA9s).

I am not sure if this view is healthy for Singapore. Why I say that? Let me quote a few persons and articles before I make my point.